How to Block Out Neighbour Noise

The Thing That Works Best Is Not Acoustic

This page is about sound, but the most effective thing you can do has nothing to do with sound. It would be dishonest to bury it under three thousand words of physics.

Most neighbour noise is not on purpose, and most people have no idea you can hear them. Buildings carry sound in ways that are hard to notice from inside a flat. Someone walking normally in soft shoes on a bare floor can be unbearable in the room below and barely noticeable in the room they are in. They are not being rude. They do not know.

A short, friendly, specific talk solves a surprising number of these problems. Being specific matters. "We can hear footsteps in our bedroom until about midnight" gives someone something to act on, while "you are noisy" gives them something to defend. A rug, a pair of slippers, moving a speaker off a shared wall, or moving a washing machine cycle by two hours is easy for them and can change everything for you.

If that fails, take it further before you start building work. A landlord, a letting agent, a managing agent, or the environmental health team at your local authority will usually have a way to deal with this. Tenancy agreements and leases often include rules about noise. The details vary by country, and we cannot say more than this here: in most places that route exists and it is free, while building work is not.

Everything below is for when those options are used up, not available, or simply going to take months. You still have to sleep tonight.

Two Different Routes That Need Opposite Answers

This section makes the rest of the page work. It is also why most advice on this subject fails for about half the people who read it. Almost every guide recommends one thing. Neighbour noise is two problems.

Some sound travels through the air (experts call it airborne sound). It reaches you through gaps and through the wall itself: talking, a television, music at a moderate volume, a dog. Because it follows air paths, sealing the gaps reduces it. Speech you can follow is the part that really stops you sleeping, because a voice you can nearly understand is far harder to ignore than one you cannot. Speech sits in the middle range, between deep rumble and high hiss.

Other sound travels through the building itself (structure-borne sound). Footsteps, a door closing, a washing machine spinning, a chair dragged across a floor, the bass from a speaker on a shared surface. The energy goes straight into the frame of the building, and the frame carries it, sometimes a surprising distance. It arrives as deep sound, because buildings carry deep sounds far better than high ones. It cannot be sealed out, because no gap is involved.

That leads straight to the answer. Sound masking means covering one sound with a steadier one, so your brain stops noticing it. It only works when the covering sound is in the same range as the noise. So noise through the building (bass, footsteps, doors, appliances) needs brown noise, which has most of its energy in the deep range. Speech through the air needs white or green noise. Those have energy in the range where voices are, and where brown noise has almost none.

Use the wrong one and it will seem that masking does not work. Brown noise against a conversation through a wall is close to useless, however loud you make it, and white noise against footsteps from above is worse. The player at the top of this page has all four colours, so you can test this against your actual neighbours in about five minutes. That is a better test than anything written.

Which One Do You Have?

You can work this out tonight without any equipment. It takes a few minutes, and it decides everything that follows.

Can you feel it as well as hear it? If you can sense a sound through the floor, the bed frame or the mattress, it is coming through the building. Sound that comes through the air and a wall does not do that.

Is it much louder at one wall? Put your ear near the shared wall, then the middle of the room, then the opposite wall. Sound through the air and a wall is clearly loudest at that wall. Sound through the building tends to be more even across the room, because the whole floor or ceiling gives it off, not one surface.

Does closing something change it? Shut the inside door, close the small vent in the window frame, or block the gap under the door with a rolled towel. If it changes noticeably, gaps are carrying a good part of it, and sealing is worth doing. No change at all points to the building.

Can you make out words, or only a rhythm? If you can nearly follow a conversation, it is coming through the air, and it is in the speech range. If you get the thump of a bass line but never the tune, it is coming through the building, and the tune is lost on the way to you.

Is it worse in a room that does not touch theirs? This one surprises people. Sound can travel through the frame of a building and come out in a room that shares no wall, floor or ceiling with the source. If a noise is loudest in a room that should be furthest from it, stop looking for a gap. There is not one.

Why Footsteps From Above Defeat Almost Everything

Noisy upstairs neighbours are the hardest version of this problem. It is worth knowing why before you spend money, because most of the products sold for it cannot work.

Footsteps are impact noise, which skips the air completely. A heel hitting a floor puts energy straight into the building. There is no stage in the air where a seal or barrier could stop it. Your ceiling then acts like a large speaker, sending that energy into your room, and it is on your side of the building.

So fixes on your side mostly fail. Acoustic foam on the ceiling does nothing at all. Foam soaks up echoes inside a room, but this problem is sound coming through the ceiling, not echo. Many people buy foam for this, and it is money spent on the wrong problem. Adding weight to the underside of a ceiling helps a little, and it is a serious building job. What really works is decoupling: building a separate ceiling that does not touch the structure above. That is expensive, lowers your ceiling, and is usually impossible in a rented flat.

The best fix is on their side, and it is cheap. A rug or carpet with underlay in the room above removes a large part of the thumping at the source, because it stops the energy getting into the building in the first place. So do soft shoes. This is why the first section of this page is about talking to them. The fix costs them very little and costs you nothing, and no work on your ceiling comes close to it.

And masking handles it fairly well. Footsteps arrive as deep sound, so brown noise is a good match. The hard part is that footsteps are separate events, not a steady sound. Each one rises out of the background, and that is exactly where masking is weakest. Expect it to take the edge off, not to remove them.

Setting the Masking Up

Choose the colour from your test, not from taste. For sound through the building (bass, footsteps, doors, appliances), use brown. For speech and television through the air, use white or green. If you have both, which is common in a flat, choose for the one that wakes you more often. Or use pink as a middle ground, and accept that it is a compromise.

Green is worth trying against voices. It puts its energy in the middle of the speech range instead of spreading it evenly like white noise. So it usually covers a conversation at a lower volume, with less of the hiss that makes white noise tiring over eight hours.

Use a speaker that suits the colour. Brown noise needs a speaker with real bass, because a phone speaker cannot play the deep part that does the covering. White and green are much easier, and will work well enough from almost anything. This is a real difference between the two cases, and it affects what you need to buy, if anything.

Place it near you, not near the wall. The natural urge is to aim the sound at the source of the problem. But masking happens at your ear, so a speaker close to your head does the same job at a much lower volume. That also means less of your sound goes back through the wall to the person on the other side.

Set the volume against the peaks. A door closing and a footstep are both sudden events. A volume chosen during a quiet minute will be too low for every one of them. Listen for a few minutes, and set it so a typical peak stops standing out.

Run it all night. Neighbour noise is often worst at the changeovers: someone coming home at one in the morning, someone leaving for an early shift. A timer that ends at midnight misses exactly those. Note that a browser tab cannot play all night. Every website is paused by your phone or computer when the screen locks, this site included. For the whole night, you need an installed app or a sound machine.

What Else Is Worth Doing, and What Is Not

Worth doing: seal the gaps, if the noise comes through the air. A gap under a door, a shared extractor duct, back-to-back electrical sockets in a shared wall, a letterbox, holes for cables. Sound takes the easiest route, and one opening undoes a lot of solid wall. This is cheap, and it gives the best return against voices and television.

Worth doing: move the bed. Moving your head away from a shared wall, and putting a full bookcase or a wardrobe against it, is free and does more than most purchases. Heavy, solid things against the wall help; empty space does not.

Worth doing: earplugs, for the noise through the air. Earplugs block high and middle sounds best, which is exactly where speech is, so they are really good against a talking neighbour. They are poor against bass and footsteps, for the same reason in reverse. Earplugs plus brown noise covers both kinds, and it is the strongest combination you can get without building work.

Not worth doing: acoustic foam. It soaks up echoes inside a room and does almost nothing to sound coming from another one. It is sold hard for this purpose, and it is the wrong product. If you already bought some, it is a common mistake, and not an obvious one.

Mostly not worth doing: soundproof curtains and thin wall panels. They can take a little off the high sounds, which were already the least troublesome part, and they do nothing to deep sounds. Blocking sound comes down to weight and to separation (decoupling), and a curtain has neither.

Worth knowing before you spend: this is the reverse of the traffic case. With a road outside, the building is on your side, and fixing its weakest point really helps. With neighbours, the building is what carries the sound to you, and there is far less you can do from inside your own flat.

What This Will Not Do

It will not fix thumping from above. Masking softens footsteps but does not remove them, and nothing on your side of the ceiling works well. The fix is a rug in their flat, which is why the conversation matters more than the equipment.

It will not reduce your exposure. Masking raises the background instead of lowering the noise, so the total sound in your room goes up. That is a fair trade for sleeping through something, but it is not the same as living somewhere quieter.

It will not handle sudden sounds well. A door slammed at two in the morning rises far above any sensible masking volume, and sudden sounds are the ones hearing is most alert to.

It will not settle a dispute. If the noise is on purpose, or goes on after a reasonable request, that is a matter for a landlord, an agent or a local authority. Masking makes it bearable while that runs its course. It should not be the reason you stop pursuing it.

It is not a treatment for anything. If your sleep has been poor for weeks and quieter neighbours do not change it, the next step is a clinician, not a different colour of noise.

If You Only Read One Paragraph

Neighbour noise is two problems. Bass, footsteps, doors and appliances travel through the building. They arrive as deep sound, cannot be sealed out, and need brown noise. Voices and television travel through the air and through gaps. They sit in the middle range, sealing reduces them, and they need white or green noise. Work out which you have: can you feel it as well as hear it, is it loudest at one wall, can you make out words? Then match the colour to it, because the wrong colour will convince you that masking does not work. For the noise through the air, seal the gaps and add earplugs. Put heavy furniture against the shared wall. Nothing on your side of a ceiling fixes footsteps from above, but a rug in their flat does. That is why the first thing to try is still a short, specific, friendly conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related pages

• Decibel Meter — Check how loud your room is, and which noise colour covers it best.
• Sound Masking — Masking does not block sound. It raises the background so the noise stops standing out, and the colour has to match the noise.
• Block Out Snoring — Snoring is the hardest sound to cover: deep, uneven, and a metre from your head with no wall in the way. What really helps.
• Block Traffic Noise — Your walls already removed the high sounds from the traffic outside. That is why brown noise covers it indoors and white noise does not.
• Masking vs Earplugs — Earplugs work least well on deep sounds, which is most household noise. Masking can be matched to the noise. Why the answer is usually both.
• Brown Noise — The deepest colour: a steady rumble that is best for traffic noise and long nights.
• Green Noise — The middle colour: pink noise with the middle sounds made stronger, and the only one of the five with no standard definition.
• White Noise — The flat, bright colour, and the best of the five at making speech impossible to follow.
• Brown Noise App — Which brown noise app to install, whether it is really free, and what an app can do that a browser tab cannot.
• Brown Noise Machine — Two very different products are sold as a brown noise machine, and one of them cannot make brown noise. What to check before buying.
• Brown Noise Generator — A real brown noise generator in your browser: made live as you listen, with no file and no loop.